Monday, August 15th, 2022

Photo by Tiffany Moon

I’ve been walking around the area with Tiffany and exercising as much as I can lately because I have to or else my bones are just going to disintegrate. That and the constant pain that I’m in has been taking a massive toll on my mental health. No one likes being around someone who is just a misery machine.

I was doing well for a couple of years there (2014-2016) when I was signed to a modeling agency because it was literally my job to constantly be in semi-decent shape in case an audition for something came up at the last minute, which was usually the case. I wasn't doing it for me.

When I was focusing on keeping a steady workout routine, I was not in much pain at all compared to how I’ve been feeling the past few years. My doctor told me back then that I was actually reversing the curvature in my spine by lifting weights, keeping the muscles surrounding my spine strong and to "keep up the weightlifting".

I started focusing on ENERGY more in late 2016 / 2017 because things were starting to take off with the band again and I didn’t want to let musical opportunities pass me by. After that tour, things just went off the rails for a bit and I lost my car for a couple of years and had to walk and carry anything that was with me literally everywhere. I was too exhausted from overworking myself physically to even keep a routine. I was also in one of the worst mental states of my life at the time, so it just wasn't happening.

Music has, does, and always will come before anything else, but it’s becoming more and more apparent to me that focusing on my physical health will lead to me creating more music because I will not be miserable all the time anymore. My musical output pretty much stopped as soon as I stopped working out my body...

At least I'm working on it now. 

Next up: my diet...

Friday, August 5th, 2022

 Living with BPD means being afraid of my moods even when I'm feeling on top of the world. 

I start a lot of my days feeling absolutely great. Like I could record a song, go for some exercise, be productive, yet social, etc.

Then in the same day, one small inconvenience (too trivial to even mention) will send me spiraling out of control. This causes my adrenal gland or whatever to fire off all of my fight or flight chemicals. After one bout of splitting, my energy is depleted so much that I often require a few hours of sleep afterwords.

My mental illness wasn't always this bad...or maybe it was? 

A lot of what has stopped me dead in my tracks from thinking that these issues are NOT in fact issues with me is the fact that every behavioral and / or mood issue of mine has been a problem for every single human being that I have ever got to know / had to interact with for long periods of time.

I am just so embarrassed of how little control I feel over this disorder, and now they're telling me that I might have bipolar 2 as well because of my hypo-mania combined with my days-on-end depression episodes.

BPD and bipolar are often confused, and with good reason in my opinion. They seem to have a lot of overlapping symptoms. I can sort of see why they're suspecting that I might have bipolar 2 as well though. I just can't articulate it very well right now because I'm not a doctor.

Tiffany and I went to bed last night with the plans of going for a walk in the cemetery at some point today. It's truly a peaceful and serene place that I look forward to visiting for years to come. I'm so glad she showed it to me the other day, because I instantly saw so many future bonding moments for us there.

I feel good about today. I want to stay feeling good about today.

P.S.

I uploaded a live performance of "I Killed Your Boyfriend" from 2017 to ENERGY's YouTube channel.

Someone sent this in (along with some other songs), and it's been a trip seeing such high quality footage of myself back then. Tiffany had mentioned that a lot of the other footage of ENERGY on the internet is either blurry, or it doesn't look like me anymore because the band has been around for so long, so obviously I'm going to appear different. 

She said it finally felt like she was seeing what it looks like when the current me performs. I really, really liked that she said that. 

I love my life, and I'm so grateful for Tiffany as well as new people coming into my life lately.

I just feel very blessed right now. Thank you for reading this, and I'm sorry if my mental illness has ever directly affected you.